If you love experimental cinema and you live in Nashville then you’re in luck: the second annual Defy Film Fest starts on Friday night and the event includes screenings of 64 experimental films through Saturday. Here’s a bit from my Critics’ Pick in this week’s Nashville Scene…

I was only able to screen a couple of films ahead of the fest. Here are a couple of capsule reviews of two selections I definitely recommend…

This year’s program boasts seven features, including MA, which sets a modern-day version of the Nativity in the American Southwest, and Midwestern teenage 1970s dramedy Knowing Nothing Cold. The fest’s 57 shorts include the Appalachian horror flick “Blood Letting,” the culty creepfest “Color Field,” and the conspiracy thriller “Appellation.” Don’t miss the silent events or the looping projection of the metaphysical science-fiction film Hermetica Komhata HK320 in 615’s back hall. Visit defyfilmfestival.com for a full schedule and tickets.

Knowing Nothing Cold reminded me of Richard Linklater’s films like Dazed and Confused and Everybody Wants Some — the movie follows the daily lives of a group of Midwestern teenagers in the 1970′s. The kids smoke and eat candy and steal records and get high. The boys get in fights and the girls talk about how dumb they are even if they’re really cute. The one way this movie differs from Linklater’s retro teen flicks is that writer/director Jeff Kao’s screenplay only has about a quarter of the words Linklater packs into his chatty films. Knowing Nothing Cold is an impressionistic film that slowly unfolds in a series of loosely connected scenes that don’t constitute a typical forward driving plot. This is the kind of film formula that can only work with interesting characters brought to life with great performances. Luckily, for Knowing Nothing Cold‘s audiences Kao and his cast fill this film with scene after scene of sincere, affecting, haunting moments.

Appellation is set in Britain decades in the future. A super bug has decimated crops and only commercial agriculture is allowed in the wake of the tragedy — small organic farmers use secret grow rooms to cultivate healthy fruits and vegetables even though this makes them terrorists in the eyes of the government agency charged with hunting them down. Appellation is like a 10-minute-long Black Mirror episode, and even though the short ultimately feels like the first few scenes in a much longer film, Appellation left me wanting to see that film.

I’ll be heading over on Friday afternoon to pick up some laminates and prepare myself for a weekend of weird and wonderful films. Hope to see you there!

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Usually on Fridays I just post something from my blog’s archive, and I’ll do that today as well, but first this:

I write a monthly column for the Nashville Scene that previews the First Saturday art events that happen at two different gallery crawls all over the city. I don’t get a ton of words to cover everything so I have to pick and choose. This month was extra tough as we’re going to print early to compensate for the holiday weekend. As a result some interesting looking shows didn’t make the cut if only for length or rushing, and I wanted to mention one of them here because it looks like a cool mix of poetry and images that speaks to the overlap we’ve already been seeing between Nashville’s literary and visual arts communities. My own Pikes Project mixes photography, essays and poetry so a show that combines verses with visuals automatically catches me eye and my ear.

Here’s the word on Listen:

CONVERGE is pleased to present LISTEN, a provocative group show of text based artwork curated by Alysha Irisari Malo. LISTEN celebrates the expression of the written word in the visual arts, exploring various media including painting, printmaking, installation, mixed media, and fiber art. Participating artists include Jane Braddock (represented by Tinney Contemporary), Briena Harmening, Alysha Irisari Malo, and Cynthia Marsh. The show runs from Saturday, May 6th through Sunday, June 4th, 2017, at the SNAP (South Nashville Action People) Building, 1224 Martin Street, Nashville, TN 37203. The second floor will have artwork installed for the duration of the show, while the first floor will have artwork installed for pop-up events during the Opening and Closing Reception weekends. These events coincide with the monthly Arts & Music at Wedgewood-Houston crawl and are free and open to the public. The Closing Reception for LISTEN will be held on Saturday, June 3rd, from 6:00 to 10:00 pm.

CONVERGE is a conscious collective of creative individuals interested in collaborative projects and community outreach, initiated by the husband and wife team, architectural designer Eric Malo and artist and poet Alysha Irisari Malo. The group conceives and realizes project-based art and design, lifestyle, cultural, and community programming in Wedgewood-Houston. CONVERGE currently hosts a series of neighborhood urban design workshops in Wedgewood-Houston, and is excited to have LISTEN as its inaugural art crawl event.

Find out more about this exhibition on their Facebook event page.

Now here is a poetic From the Archives Friday post featuring poet Michael McClure and a caged lion in a weird performance that I’m thinking about as a kind of farewell here at the last days of The Greatest Show on Earth…

I’ve written about 2nd generation Beat poet Michael McClure on this here slate of light before. McClure joined up with Ginsberg and Kerouac when the New Yorkers made their way to San Fransisco, setting off a poetry renaissance and a worldwide youth movement upon arrival.

It’s easy to look back at the ’60′s with rainbow-colored glasses, but that’s no excuse to. A lot of wrongheadedness and naivety ran much of the ’60s counterculture off the rails. Of course, a lot of good art, music and ideas came from that time as well.

Sometimes, weird bits of 60′s countercultural expression that still turn up from that time seem just as absurd today as they must have 50 years ago. Here, McClure is interviewed before stopping at a zoo to read poetry to a lion.

Stay awake,

Joe Nolan

On Wednesday afternoon my Facebook wall began to light-up with the frantic news that outsider musician and Nashvillian par-excellence, Dave Cloud, was in an intensive care unit as a result of his battle with cancer. The news came out of nowhere for most of the rocker’s friends and admirers and yesterday’s announcement of his death came so quickly that most are still trying to wrap their heads — and hearts — around the wide, wild space Cloud and his art once occupied.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the man’s bio: By day a volunteer book reader for the blind, Cloud undergoes a transformation at night, and for over three decades has entertained patrons of local dive bar Springwater, often with his band The Gospel of Power. Cloud’s unpredictable performances can be uproarious, jaw-droppingly bizarre events, delighting some while frightening others. His musical amalgam of experimental garage rock and lounge crooning—defies easy categorization, but his delivery makes the experience hard to forget. Cloud has appeared in several films, videos, and television programs, including Harmony Korine’s films Gummo and Trash Humpers.

There have been some thoughtful remembrances in Nashville’s local media. Here’s a bit from Jim Ridley’s post on the Nashville Scene’s Country Life blog yesterday afternoon…

Twenty years ago, while Nashville was lusting after the acclaim and approval of coastal arbiters, Cloud was bashing out untutored, incantatory garage rock in venues like Springwater and Lucy’s Record Shop. Nobody at the time suspected how crucial those clubs would be to the city’s reversing fortunes — or how much of a cult figure Cloud would become in Scandinavia and other ports of call.

And yet even when he was backed by members of Lambchop, Silver Jews and other vanguard indie bands, Cloud bowed to nobody’s fashion. Whether he was playing ’60s bubblegum tunes or easy-listening standards, they came out in his own Martian time signatures and pulverizing arrangements, animated by the innocent primordial current of rock ‘n’ roll. He could be courtly and coarse, sophisticated and vulgar, elevated and lowbrow. What he could never be was the same damn thing you’d seen a hundred times before — or like everyone else.

I met Dave years ago at the Springwater and I remember working to re-open a re-modeled local art museum in the summer of 1999 with Dave’s debut CD, Songs I Will Always Sing, echoing through the galleries “…I’ll run the jack on you NOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!” I witnessed the interchangeable musicians who backed Dave as the Gospel of Power come and go from the Springwater stage over the years, and I know for certain that I caught a glimpse of the still-beating blood red heart of rock ‘n’ roll one Saturday night at that bar somewhere in the middle of a medley of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One.”

But, mostly I remember Dave as a good neighbor. I lived in and near Nashville’s Belmont/Hillsboro neighborhood for nearly two decades. During much of that time, Bongo Java’s original coffeehouse and the Circle K gas station and convenience store were daily stops for me. They also seemed to be daily stops for Dave. It was always a fun surprise to see the man outside of the beery, bleary late night scene at the Springwater. Off of the stage, Dave was still a big, imposing man with a deep drawl of a voice. Dave was a flat-out riot when he was rockin’ in the wee hours, but in the sober light of day he was always thoughtful, kind, eloquent and happy to see you and to chat about nearly anything that might come up. That’s the Dave Cloud I’ll miss the most.

Nashville’s pre-eminent curator of the avant-garde, Tony Youngblood lost his radio show on Vanderbilt University’s WRVU station following an appearance by Cloud. It wasn’t really Dave’s fault. Here are Youngblood’s thoughts on that episode from his website, introducing a little over an hour of a weird, wild and hilarious tour of the mind and mouth of Dave Cloud.

Featuring a band comprised of some of Nashville’s most talented players, Get It On With Dave Cloud sounds lush and bristles with detail. Dispensing with our usual arhythmic soup, the idea here was to create jilted lounge music that conversed with Dave’s dialogue. The band provided that, and in spades. I only wish we picked a different mic for Dave to speak into. WRVU Studio Mic 4 has a tendency to distort and Dave Cloud has a tendency to talk loud. (I warned Jim Hayes about that mic before. Am I the only dj that notices these kinds of things?) Still, the slight distortion in Dave’s voice kind of works in a strange way.

For an hour and eight minutes (I just couldn’t whittle it down to one hour), Dave Cloud flirts with callers, reads from dirty magazines, takes long smoke breaks, and espouses his wisdom. I’m quite proud of this episode, and it makes a fine sendoff to WRVU. In a weird way, this episode is responsible for this blog and podcast. If we hadn’t made Get It On, we still might be on WRVU. If we were still on WRVU, I probably wouldn’t have invested the time in learning how to podcast.

Listen to the full episode here.

Dave left us under the celestial sign of a Black Supermoon, at the turning of the Chinese Lunar New Year — a nearby new moon that arrives during the daytime hours, hidden by the sun’s glare.

Here’s Dave and the Gospel of Power playing a house party, and the man himself being interviewed outside the Springwater.

Stay Awake!

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Is this Fritz Hats?

As some of you may know, I’m currently a Writer in Residence at the Main Library in Nashville, TN. This means I’ve been spending a lot of time downtown, close to my various beats near the 5th Avenue galleries and the art spots in The Arcade; blocks from The Contributor offices, and in eye-shot of Legislative Plaza where I had direct access to the goings-on during Occupy Nashville’s stand there.

I’m also very close to the Bank Gallery on 3rd Avenue. Bank has been a part of Nashville’s First Saturday Art Crawl in the past, but this month all of my inquiries about their August exhibition went unanswered and they were not included in my “Crawl Space” column in the Nashville Scene. I turned my preview in before I ran into a man on 6th Avenue with an unusual name: Fritz Hats.

Hats introduced himself as a friend of a friend — Todd Greene, who maintains a studio in the same building as the Bank Gallery. “Odd,” I thought. I’d never heard Greene say a word about Hats. However, Hats seemed nice enough — dressed in a dark suit with a dark tie, Hats was mostly bald and while his wrinkled brow and spotted neck made him appear like an older man, he had a propulsive power in his gait and I struggled to keep up with him as we practically sprinted the three blocks toward the Bank’s entrance.

This unexpected manner of moving and the plastic, aquamarine shoulder bag that Hats carried were the only signs I’d seen that there was anything unusual about the man. No other animal on the planet can trump the presence of actual danger with a kind of petrified denial that humans might employ at that moment when they first feel the snare go taut. Hats opened the door, turning with a smile. Without a question in my mind, I stepped inside.

Arriving at the gallery, Hats dropped his bag while he locked the entrance. Going downstairs to the gallery, everything had changed since my last visit. The mural that Greene had created to encompass every inch of the gallery’s walls was nowhere to be seen. A clean coat of white paint left no trace — it was as if nothing had ever been there. The white expanse no longer held images, but three dimensional forms jutted out from it and into the open space of the gallery. Even the ceiling was infested with long-hanging tendrils that seemed to threaten me as I stepped forward for a closer look.

That’s when I started to get scared. My tour of the gallery was accompanied by Hats’s running commentary about his relationship to Greene, but something wasn’t right. Hats wasn’t aware of the almost manic habit Greene has had of changing homes as often as he changes the oil in his car. He mistakenly identified Greene’s child by the wrong gender. Hats also talked about Greene’s breakneck bike-riding in Chicago — clearly confusing Greene with his sometimes-studio-partner Andrew Harding who recently returned to Nashville from the City of Big Shoulders.

At that moment that I got the oddest feeling: Hats may have been an artist, but he certainly wasn’t a human. It’s hard to describe the dread that came over me. It was like experiencing the “uncanny valley” that robot scientists refer to at that moment when one’s suspended disbelief comes crashing down at the notice of the slightest, unnatural discrepancy in the demeanor of an otherwise thoroughly-convincing android.

Instinctively, I rushed back toward the stairs, feeling both the sensation that I knew the space by heart and that I had never been there before. I ran over that comfy couch in the center of the room and past a pile of magazines that looked like they’d been set aside for recycling in some art project. I shot around the railing and onto the steps like a space craft careening around a planet, trying to build enough momentum to make the nearest star. I sprinted up and into the darkened hallway where I saw the bag Hats had been carrying before we’d arrived. I grabbed the bag, lowered my head and crashed straight into the locked door. One window let go in a shower of shimmering shards before it danced on the steps in front of the gallery in a cacophony of panic and confusion. I worked the lock frantically and shouldered my way through the swinging gauntlet and into the street.

I sprinted up to 6th Avenue just in time to catch the Number 2 bus back across town. I caught my breath before I noticed the smell of anise emanating from the bag. Curious, I opened it up expecting to find a stash of black licorice or maybe even an impulsively stowed bottle of absinthe — the cap not properly secured before Hats stuffed it back in his sea-colored container. Reaching into the bag I found the only thing inside of it: A digital camera.

When I got home I found an email from Todd Greene inviting me to an exhibition and a concert at the Bank Gallery this Saturday night at 226 Third Avenue North. The email mentioned that Greene’s band Bulb would play a set at 10 p.m., but there was no effort to answer my most burning question: Who is Fritz Hats!

Stay awake!

Watch this performance of my OccupySong at Occupy Congress in DC!